As Tanzania commemorates 12 years after his death, the Corruption tracker system finds his words, coined many years ago, worth being reflected upon today as the Country struggles to tame corruption and corrupt practices in society and public office.

Mwalimu Nyerere has been recorded in the books of history as one of the few greatest leaders of our time. On March, 13[SUP]th[/SUP], 1995 Mwalimu delivered a historical speech on what he saw as the &#8216;potential fractures' threatening the future of Tanzania as a state and its government.

His speech which came to be popularly referred to in swahili as &#8216;NYUFA' literary translated in English as &#8216;fracture' singled out corruption, disregard to the constitution, tribalism alias ethnicity and religious sectarianism as to watch out against . According to Mwalimu, if not well managed, these had a very potential of destabilizing the nation. He insisted by quoting the Swahili saying, &#8216;usipoziba nyufa, utajenga ukuta! Which can loosely be translated to, &#8216;lest you fix a fracture you will have to erect a new wall.'

Mwalimu Nyerere spoke in detail about the effects of corruption and how he was openly disturbed by it. Nyerere mentioned five fractures and corruption was one of them.
&#8216;In the old days of TANU we had what was called, Leadership Code or TANU Principles. These principles guided how we conducted business. One of the principles stated that: "Corruption is a foe to human rights, I will not give or receive bribe."

He cautioned that there was corruption in his government too, the first phase government, but what mattered was how corruption was handled.

"Do not think that in the first phase government there was no corruption; it was there but we were harsh on it. From the beginning we wanted everybody to know that (we would be harsh on it). We wanted people to know that we will be unforgiving with corrupt elements in the government and all those who give bribes. From the beginning when we attained self governance we wanted everybody to know that. We passed a law that if someone takes bribe both the giver and the receiver to all swim in the hot soup"

"There were no jokes, and so we passed laws to teach such people that we were against the conduct. If someone is found guilty by the court for giving bribe, we did not leave the magistrate to determine the punishment. We imprisoned the culprit for a period of not less than two years, with twenty four lashes; twelve when he enters the prison and twelve when the sentence is over so that he would go and show his wife back home"

"Some of you here were still young when we were informed that our Justice Minister had been bribed. We pinned him down and he confessed that he had been bribed. He went behind bars and got his lashes. In the beginning we wanted to show these senior people that there is &#8216;no tolerance' here. By then we had English magistrates. I knew magistrates disliked that law. First, it imposed sentences on them.

They disliked laws that imposed a sentence. They didn't have the freedom of deciding, if they found that the respondent is guilty, that was it. They did not need to ask themselves of the sentence as the law already provided. They disliked such a law".

Second, they disliked lashing. I didn't like it too, but I disliked corruption more. I hated it more than lashing somebody. Corruption is an enemy to justice; if you have corruption, poor people have no rights. The law must scare the corrupted. Therefore I disliked lashing somebody, but I hated corruption.

Therefore we passed a law which these British magistrates disliked. First, they disliked imposed sentences which they. Second, they disliked lashing. Thirdly, they respected that minister who was bribed. Therefore they looked on possible ways to acquit him because justice and law were two opposites. I am giving this example to show you how serious we were, Mwalimu said.

We did not have jokes with somebody on issues related to corruption. Justice is not bought, how much worth is its value in Shillings? But now we are shaken by one big fracture Corruption. Corruption nowadays has affected our image.

When I walk around the world people respect me a little bit because we built a disciplined nation here. Now it's all gone, Mwalimu lamented. We want our leaders to say Corruption is a taboo, Nyerere cautioned.[/TD]
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